I had a friend in middle school that shoplifted gum and Certs, then sold them on campus. Can’t beat that profit margin.
Wow. You deserve a parenting award for that. I am humbled and inspired
i remember my Cub Scout pack being tasked with selling lightbulbs when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old. This was when I was living in suburban Chicago, and while it might have been a winning program elsewhere, it was a struggle to sell them here: at that time, the local electrical utility (Commonwealth Edison) had a program where customers could get reduced-cost lightbulbs every month when they paid their electric bills. I did sell some bulbs, but most of the neighbors said, “I have plenty of light bulbs!”
The Boy’s Club put me on the street selling coupons for fireworks. Buy a coupon for $5 and redeem it for $5 worth of fireworks. What a deal! I sold enough to win a swim mask and snorkel.
I hated selling too, magazine subscriptions, raffle tickets and such. I am familiar with the sell Grit ads, but I have never nor know anyone that has ever seen a Grit paper.
My grade school was in a town of about 300, surrounded by farms (one of which I lived on). Selling stuff for school in town was right out, because all the townies beat you to it. And since 3/4 of the farms had a kid or kids in school, you couldn’t sell to them either. So a useless task.
I don’t know if the school teachers and admin types every realized this. It was a “business model” that just didn’t work in tiny town America.
Don’t listen, those women lie!
I remember in junior high or high school we sold little boxes of peanut M&Ms for band uniforms or some other fundraiser. (I think these were the “theater box” that holds 3.1 ounces.) The school paid $0.25 each and we sold them for twice that and we were allowed to sell them in school. That was a very popular item.
I donated mine.
The kids in my neighborhood all bought ‘The Sylvan Glade Jumbo-Giant Guaranteed Growth Raise-Them-in-Your-Cellar-for-Big-Profit Mushrooms’ from the Great Bayou Novelty Greenhouse, and fed them to our parents. 
At least they sold a product people actually use.
The Boy Scout popcorn is so massively overpriced, it’s just as good an idea to simply donate that amount of money to the local troop or council.
Speaking of which, this popped up on Facebook a couple days ago. Good information, for people who have any kind of dietary restrictions.
Substantially all of those “sell things to raise money for [good cause]” are massive ripoffs by the logistics company, exploiting the beneficiary entity (scouts, school,etc), the free labor, and the donors. They win, everyone else they touch loses.
In a just world ICE would be raiding those companies and hauling their owners & leadership to jails.
Trump’s lifelong business model.
A neighbor girl sold Christmas cards, specifically personalized Christmas cards. My (step)father felt like he could help the girl out, and made a big order. When they arrived, his name was spelled “Maurice” instead of “Morris”. We could hear the poor girl sobbing on the phone when he called her to adamantly state he wouldn’t pay for them. At thus I learned not to go into sales.
True, BUT the last Boy Scout popcorn brochure I saw said, “70% of the sales price goes to the troop.”
Yeah, just donate.
When I have bought merch, I have limited myself to purchasing things I could actually use.
I remember Christmas wrapping paper sales brochures brought home.
Noped out on all those things. Right in the garbage.
My kids had no taste for asking strangers to buy. I had no way of doing it. We had no neighbors.
Yeah, donate cash to the group if you wanna help. That’s what I did. As well as sponsoring(like cheer), chaperone(bus, ugh) and volunteering in their activities(band concessions).
I was on all decorating committees.
God the heady days of parenting!!
I was just going to mention this…we had similar “entrepreneurs” when I was that age.
There wasn’t much future in it, turns out.
Haha, that was a big take away for me as a kid as well. Very eye opening. 